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Train Your Brain

Your brain is computer central for your body. It’s not just the place you stash your stray thoughts, figure out equations, or daydream. Your brain tells the rest of you what to do. Heart, beat! Lungs, expand! Kidneys. . . you get the idea.

We’ve known for years that meditation, the deep meditation practiced by Zen monks, produces tremendous health benefits. Now there’s a way to enjoy those benefits without spending hours learning to meditate.

It’s called entrainment or brain entrainment, and it’s as easy as listening to an album. In a nutshell, here’s how it works.

When different low-frequency sounds are fed into each ear separately through headphones, your brain waves change to adapt to them. In the 1970’s a biophysicist named Dr. Gerald Oster discovered that your brain can be “trained” with these “binaural beats” to go into specific states, hence the name “entrainment.”

You may have experienced this without knowing it. A persistent drumbeat at a concert might have made you feel “one” with the music, as though you were really in sync with it. This could have happened because your brainwaves actually synchronized with the pulse of the drum. There’s a name for this phenomenon, the FFR or Frequency Following Response.

Keep in mind that entrainment doesn’t create anything new: it simply brings your brain into a predetermined wave pattern. Your brain waves naturally move among the alpha, beta and theta states many times during each day. If the two hemispheres of your brain are out of sync with each other, entrainment will help them play nicely together again.

There are a number of companies which produce entrainment audio tracks, and they all make different claims and charge wildly different amounts. All, though, use binaural beats, usually masked behind sounds like rain, running water, or temple bells and gongs.

To receive maximum benefit, you need to listen to these recordings using earphones that cover the ear completely (pilot style), not earbuds.

Click here for more information about entrainment, or here to see the entrainment products I recommend.